Apparently young Australians just aren’t into protesting the injustices we face today. Um, hello? Reclaim the Night, the Occupy movement, SlutWalk, the Arab Spring… all activist events started by Gen Y on social media which encouraged Time magazine to name the Protestor as its 2011 Person of the Year. Writer Alecia Simmonds does make a fair point that Aussies are particularly apathetic towards causes, but her assertion that online petitioning, blogging and social media doesn’t compare to on-the-ground activism kind of undercuts fellow Daily Life columnist Kasey Edwards’ argument last week that “Big social changes don’t just happen… Social and cultural change evolves out of a meandering path of small victories. Seeds need to be planted and ground needs to be fertilised.”

Is freedom of speech overrated? Personally, I think so, as it allows those with abhorrently narrow-minded views to spill hate speech. This article makes the observation that free speech only seems to be defended when people like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt put their foot in their mouth. [Daily Life]

“Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point talks about the ‘bystander problem’. He writes:

“‘One of the most infamous incidents in New York City history … was the 1964 stabbing death of a young Queens woman by the name of Kitty Genovese. Genovese was chased by her assailant and attacked three times on the street, over the course of half an hour, as thirty-eight of her neighbours watched from their windows. During that time, however, none of the thirty-eight witnesses called the police.’

“At first this horrific case was explained away as being the result of the dehumanising effect of urban life, the fact that the anonymity and alienation of city life makes people hard and unfeeling. But two New York City psychologists subsequently conducted a series of studies to undrestand what they called the ‘bystander problem’. Gladwell writes:

“‘When people are in a group… responsibility for acting is diffused. They assume that someone else will make the call, or they assume because no one else is acting, the apparent problem… isn’t really a problem.

“‘In the case of Kitty Genovese, then… the lesson is not that no one called despite the fact that thirty-eight people heard her scream; it’s that no one called because thirty-eight people heard her scream. Ironically had she been attacked on a lonely street with just one witness, she might have lived.’”

I think this relates to “pack mentality”, as in the scene below from Scream 2, as well as “the bystander effect”. What do you think?